Wowee Zowee, today everyone is talking about the Family Research Council Action PAC's "prayercast event" (where do they come up with these names?) that our Senator, Jim Demint, attended with the likes of hardcore right-wingnuts Michele Bachmann, Sam Brownback, Todd Akin and Mike McIntyre. MSNBC covered the three-ring circus at some length last night.Talking Points Memo reports that Dr Dobson also dropped in, to see what condition his condition was in:
James Dobson participated via phone, offering a prayer and seeming to tie the health care bill and the country's overall political direction to none other than the Devil: "I just pray that You will frustrate the plans of the Evil One, and revive us again with conviction and forgiveness. Show us how we can further your cause, Lord and advance your kingdom, and we will be careful to give you the praise. Just begin a revival in our hearts that will restore us as one nation under God."Wow, silly me, I was just thinking that anyone who wants to deny health care to anyone for any reason will burn in hell for all eternity. But then, I am an adherent of that OLD TIME RELIGION, straight from THE BIBLE, which categorically states that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for Dr Dobson, a very rich man, to go to heaven.
I think they missed that verse.
In any event, the whole thing has me nauseated. Clean hands and a pure heart? (That would leave out politicians, simply by definition, wouldn't it?)
Well, get your barf bag, here it is. South Carolinians will note Jim Demint's reverently bowed head (far left of screen) at around 1:57:
On a purely theological note--as a child, I attended a Free Will Baptist church with my beloved uncle Ernest (R.I.P.), in which everyone started praying out loud simultaneously in the manner of the prayercast-participants at the end of this video. (Also, many Pentecostal churches do this.) I admit, I've always kinda liked the idea behind this tradition, that God can hear everybody at once... but then again, if they are all praying for the same thing, as they are here (they weren't at my uncle's church), then one assumes they could just ask in unison for an end to universal health care, couldn't they?: Dear God, let the people continue to suffer in pain and poverty, without any affordable health care... wait, Daisy asks, startled, which God is this? (Moloch!)*
I am somewhat amazed (okay, a lot amazed) to see this once-pious style-of-worship employed by politicians for right-wing ends (notice they held the prayercast on a Wednesday night, when the most faithful Protestants attend mid-week services) -- just as I would be if I saw Mass or Benediction being used for the same purposes.
Why is this any different than Muslims praying for victory, or any other blasphemous mix of politics and religion? Oh right, they're Muslims and we're not.
These HERETICS are the scum of the earth. (AND they will burn in hell.)
~*~
*I primarily refer not only to the historical Moloch, but to Allen Ginsburg's Moloch:
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch theYES! That's him!
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!
Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories
dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch
whose soul is electricity and banks!
This is who they are actually praying to. Moloch, who enjoys the illness and pain of working people, as they die right next to Dr Dobson's homes (plural), valued at well over a half-million dollars each. Money he took right out of their pockets, too.
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!I'd recognize him anywhere.
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven!